I am a man. Most men take this statement at face value and do not take the time to examine what it truly means and how to be sympathetic to the female experience. They do not explore statements such as, “I am a man and I have privilege” or “I am a man and I am a member of the dominant gender” Men do not think of themselves as gendered the same way Dalton described white people never thinking of themselves as raced (15). Men as a whole do not “get” gender; they do not understand why gender figures so heavily on so many women’s minds because most men do not choose to critically examine their own gender and how their man-ness affects their lives. They do not need to do this because society does not force them to. They do not get married and have limiting societal expectations placed upon them (unless being unable to sleep around is limited). They do not as a whole need to understand the struggle women go through to decide if they are going to give up their career to have a family or to attempt to have it “all”. Many feminists now even ask what would the pioneers of women’s rights do with the gift of opportunity many women have now received (Lee, 100-101)? Would they attempt to do it all or would they give it all up for the privilege of being a mother, and not having someone else raise their kids, or a housewife and not hiring another woman to do housework (and not having to think about exploiting the women under their employee to do these “feminine” tasks)? And how can I as a man be sympathetic to this struggle. Yes, a man could stay home and raise his children or work the second shift at home by doing all of the housework but is that the man women truly want? Do feminists truly want a man who is constantly examining assumptions about his own gender or do they want a more stable man that they have been taught to desire such as, ”A man who is strong, stable, predictable, and powerful” (Schultz, 118). How can men even try to relate to the examination feminists undertake of their own lives? And how can we get all men to try to relate to this? And is it even possible for the world to become progressive enough to allow for the disappearance of gender binaries, for all of us to only be considered as human?
Work Cited:
Lee, M. 1995. “Pushing Away the Plate” Chapter 9 from To be Real. Anchor Books.
Schultz, J. 1995.”Getting off on Feminism” Chapter 10 ibid.
I have some immediate concerns with this blog. There are a lot of assumptions here, the primary and most concerning regarding gender roles, as well as distinguishing gender and sex.
ReplyDelete"They do not get married and have limiting societal expectations placed upon them (unless being unable to sleep around is limited)." The language here is biased and offensive; as if "sleeping around" is a male-only domain. Read Jessica Valenti's, The Purity Myth. Women like sex and sleep around too.
And embarking on the question of what, "women really want." Really? The gender role binaries you lay out are astonishing. As if fathers who stay at home to take care of their children are unmanly, and therefore undesirable to all women, including feminists, since we've been socialized to "desire" strong, stable men. The dualistic one or other leaves so many perspectives out. What about a father who stays home to take care of his children while his husband works? Is that the kind of man another man wants? Gender and sex are not interchangable.
I appreciate very much the male perspective, and think our program especially would benefit from including the male narrative (as it fails to do so at all as far as I've seen), yet while you leave pleading for the world to become progressive and for the disapperence of gender binaires, read back through this post and see how many you can identify in your own work.
What's easiest to see in others, is what's most difficult to see in ourselves.
I found your comment to be very interesting and I appreciate your challenge to what I wrote. My original intention in writing this post was to compare the concept of white privilege from the perspective of people who are racially white to male privilege from the perspective of the stereotypical man. (Yes, stereotypes are bad, but sometimes we need to examine them in order to challenge them). So this post was intended to contain the perspective of the stereotypical man who does not see the many perspectives we do.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have always been taught and truly believe that gender is in your head and sex is in your pants but the stereotypical man does not know this.
Yes, the post contains many gender binaries, assumptions, but that was the point. By showing in a blatant obvious way what the stereotypical experience of the man and the women only allows us to begin to unravel the world of gender binaries.
And yes, I wanted to produce something that showed a very male perspective that I have felt has been missing from our readings.
Your comments show that I fulfilled my objective, which surprises me because many of the thoughts I disagree with on a personal level.